


Afraid

by fallen_timbers_pencil



Category: The Greatest Showman - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Anne loves that boy, Backstory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fear of being left, Fluff, Hospital, Hurt/Comfort, Just a little bit of Angst, Love, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Racism, Phillip is such a bean, Promises, Romance, Slavery, So Married, Star-crossed, Very fluffy, and societal expectations, cause slavery, i like the fluff, lots Of fluffy words, reassurance, so much love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 05:24:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14301732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallen_timbers_pencil/pseuds/fallen_timbers_pencil
Summary: Phillip asks Anne some questions about her past and Anne has to relive some painful fears to give him an answer he deserves.OrConfession session with a little bit of a medical scare.





	Afraid

**Author's Note:**

> I love writing these two. I have a few other stories on here if you like this one.

Anne could tell Phillip was becoming antsy waiting in the hospital. He was required to say in bed unless he needed to relieve himself or felt the need to cough. He had to have his bandages changed almost twice a day so to give his burns some air and to place some salve on the wounds. He wasn’t allowed to have more than four visitors at a time, which meant that the circus acts visited seldomly, wanting him to recover quickly. They also were busy earning some money by helping with cleanup of the burnt down circus. 

She stayed with him all the times and only left when he slept, if only just to get something to eat or change her clothes. She didn’t want to leave him ever again; but necessities were a priority as well. He insisted that she go and do something, as he knew that she was a person who always needed to be moving. But she would refuse him time and time again, instead insisting that she could try and read to him or that they play cards or he could practice breathing exercises to help with the damage to his lungs. 

The doctor had told her (or told Phillip and she’d been listening; the man wasn’t very keen to have her around all the time) that it was important they understood that he wasn’t in the clear. Smoke damage was a dangerous game to play and one could never know the extent of the damage. He was heartened by the sound of Phillip’s lungs however and pleased with the recovery rate he was improving at. He promised that he’d be out within the next few days as long as he promised to take it easy and return at the first signs of any further distress. 

Anne sat with him now, her back firmly pressed against the head of the bed and her long legs stretched out alongside his own. She was sewing some stitches into part of her shawl that had ripped in all the commotion of the fire, her hand methodically dipping in and out as she wove the threads together. Phillip watched her quietly, his eyes lidded sleepily and hair tousled from so many days spent in the hospital. 

“Where did you learn?” He asked after stretched moments of silence. 

Anne smiled as she worked, not looking up. She wanted to finish before the hospital became too dim to see in. The daylight was already fading and candlelight was too difficult to work by. 

“My mama taught me years ago. It was part of our work. The master’s wife was always ripping one thing or another, ditzy girl,” Anne explained, not spending much time on the subject. She’d not shared much about her past with Phillip and didn’t want to burden him further right now with the history of the Wheelers and their unfortunate beginnings. But she forgot who she’d fallen in love with. 

“Where did you live?” He pressed further and she could feel his eyes intently studying her. “How did you end up here?” 

Anne’s smile faded, but she didn’t chide him or back away from the question. “Georgia. Mama put us on a train and told us to never look back. We found some sideshows and learned trapeze. We wanted out of the south, so we worked our way to New York.” She pulled the needle through the beige material, the red string following. “And here we are.”

She felt Phillip turn up on his side with some difficulty; despite the cooling effect and healing properties the salve had, she knew his burns still hurt him. It was in every wince on his face and in his every stiff movement. “Is your mother still there?” 

Anne paused in her sewing, turning to look at him, her lips stretched thin in solemnity. “No. She’s dead. We went back to find her a few years ago and we discovered she died of cholera.” She watched as his face fell, grief so intense in his eyes that she almost had her breath taken away. She had come to terms with her mother’s passing. It was almost four years ago after all. But the sympathy that Phillip was expressing was enough to almost send her flying back in time to when she’d heard the news from freed slaves who had worked at the same plantation. How could anyone love that much? 

She knew it was an unreal question because she was almost certain she felt as much for him as he did for her. 

“And your father?” 

Everything following the question happened so quickly Anne wasn’t sure what hit them. His question caught her off guard and she jerked upwards, hand flying to her face to swipe away any tears that had escaped. She pricked her thumb with her needle and yelped quietly. Phillip reached for her hand and she pulled it away quickly. She stood and left the bed and in her mind, was only to search for the spool of thread she had dropped in the process. 

But Phillip was confused by both her reluctance for him to touch her and her leaving of the bed, and he jerked up after her. When he did so, something happened. 

He paused mid-leap across the bed, hunched over and wheezing, holding one hand to his chest while he attempted to cough up the nasty phlegm that had been plaguing him since the fire. Anne gave him a moment to cough while she searched. She hadn’t found it seconds later when she realized he was still coughing. Quite roughly. 

She moved to his side, his face hidden by his position, bent over the bed as he supported himself on his knees. The bed shook with the force of his hacking and she placed a hand on his back. “Phillip?” 

He rolled over and she was startled by how red his face was. His eyes were panicked and he coughed harder, his entire body wracking with the fit. Except it wasn’t a fit and it seemed like he was choking. 

Anne seized his arms, looking into his face. “Phillip?” She worried. 

He shook his head and his face turned another shade that didn’t look so forgiving. She felt tears prick her eyes as terror seized her. What was she supposed to do? “Doctor!” She cried, shaking Phillip as his terrible coughing only worsened by the second as he struggled to catch breath. Soon there were gasps of air between the coughing, his face tinged with blue. 

Anne was immobilized with fear, feeling short of breath herself, when the doctor suddenly was there, forcing her away and beating on Phillip’s back with the force of an elephant’s trunk. 

Then, Phillip gasped and coughed once, spitting onto the floor. He was trembling with exhaustion and the doctor provided a bowl into which he promptly threw up. 

Anne looked anxiously to the doctor, not daring to come close in case Phillip were to choke again. Her heart hammered painfully against her rib cage and she was shaking like a leaf. “What happened? Is he alright?” 

The doctor patted Phillip a few more times on the back and the man groaned in pain. “He’s fine, just got some mucus lodged in his throat. Don’t be afraid to hit him good a few times on the back to help him out.” Though the doctor was being helpful, he eyed Anne as if he didn’t know what to make of her. This doctor wasn’t his usual, mean-spirited doctor, but the one who came around toward the nights. 

Anne nodded, covering her mouth slightly with her hand and crossing her other arm protectively over herself as she struggled to keep herself together. The doctor made sure Phillip was finished throwing up and rinsing his mouth before offering him water and then leaving. Phillip took careful and small sips of water before setting the glass gently down on the bedside stand. His red eyes met hers and she looked away, ashamed of the way fear had incapacitated her. 

“Anne,” He rasped, his voice sounding painful to produce. “Are you okay?” 

Anne scoffed at that, eyes snapping to his momentarily, fire filling her. “Am I okay? Phillip, you were blue! What were you thinking, jumping after me like that?” 

Phillip tilted his head at her, eyes flicking down towards his shaky hands a moment. “I thought you were leaving. I thought I made you mad. Asking about your life.” 

Anne felt her tears starting to fall, sliding down her cheeks and tickling her skin. With a shuddering release of breath she’s been holding, she moved closer and sat down on the bed. He didn’t touch her; she realized that it was probably because she had withdrawn from him right before he’d started coughing. 

That had been a poor reaction on her own part. 

So she reached for his hand, tucking it against her chest much like the day he’d woken up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have reacted so badly to that. You just scared me so much, Phillip. I thought you were gonna die, thinking I was mad at you for a silly little question like that.” Shame filled her voice and she looked down at their hands against her chest and stroked a thumb over his skin. She was grateful when he said nothing, but allowed her to continue with a squeeze of his fingers. 

“I shouldn’t have reacted so poorly. You should be allowed to know where I come from,” Anne started.

Phillip interrupted her, trying to sit up a bit more before Anne leaned forward and pushed him gently back down. She didn’t need a repeat of earlier. “No Anne, I shouldn’t be prying, especially if you’d rather I didn’t know.” 

Anne shook her head at his words, sucking in her lower lip so he wouldn’t see the tremble in it. “It’s not that. It’s silly really,” She was holding back, she knew, but she was going to tell him. She was. “I’ll tell you.” 

Her heart had only just started to calm a bit and now it began twice as fast, that familiar urge to get up and run or fly to escape. But she was done running away from things that scared her. This time she was gonna run to the man who’d captured her heart so. 

So she began to speak and Phillip listened with rapt attention, his red-rimmed eyes focused solely on her. “My mama was a slave on a Georgia plantation. She was born there and grew up there. She married one of the other slaves, or married his spirit so to say. They weren’t allowed to be properly married. W. D. came from that. But his father was sold when the farm was low on income during the next harvest.” 

She focused on his hand, not ready to meet his gaze yet, not ready to see whatever was in their ocean-like depths. She realized she was about to share her fear, share part of why she made some of the decisions she did, why she knew she could be so easily hurt by this man. 

Why she was afraid. 

“My mama had to move on and raise her son without him. She was young, only sixteen. The master’s son was a scholarly man who had just come home from some fancy university. He used to play with my mama when they were kids. Skin didn’t matter when you were kids, only the ripeness of the apples or if the day was warm enough to swim in the creek down the road.” She hesitated and dared to look at him. His eyes were wide, clearly listening intently, his head tilted to one side. If he didn’t look like hell and she wasn’t telling her unfortunate life story, she would’ve told him he looked like a lost puppy. 

“My mama loved him and he loved her and he’d sneak her out so they could swim and dance in the moonlight. But my mama got pregnant by him. She hoped he would try and buy her from his father, so they could run away and be together. But I suppose…” Anne sucked in a stabilizing breath of air. 

“I guess their love wasn’t enough for him. He was afraid his father would find out about the baby and their love and punish him. So, he moved away again and left my mama with my brother and me on the way.” Anne managed to keep her voice steady as she explained. She tried to picture her mama in that moment, standing with a young W. D. on one hip and her round belly sticking out as she watched the carriage take her shattered love away. 

It was almost too much to imagine in itself and Anne couldn’t help remembering briefly when Phillip released her hand in that theatre. How cold she felt when he’d stared stoically ahead and didn’t even glance her way when she’d left his side. 

“She was left to deliver me alone. I was left without a father. I didn’t belong anywhere. W. D. was left with the shattered pieces of a mother. I was scorned because I belonged to neither white people nor black. My mama told me that story before I left. You know what she said to me?” She raised her eyes again to Phillip’s and his brow lowered a bit, his head leaning forward ever so slightly. 

“She told me that love wasn’t real. Not for people like us. She said that love was for people who could afford it and we of all people could not. She told me that my love should never be too thick. That I should keep my heart hard and my eyes set on the stars because loving the sky was the only thing that could be guaranteed to never fail. Not unless the sky came crashing down.” She finished her words with a soft chuckle, recalling the bitter sound of her mama’s southern drawl as she placed her babies on a train bound for anywhere. 

Oh Mama, if only you could see me now. What would you have to say about love? 

Phillip was silent a moment before he said the words she hoped she wouldn’t have to hear. “You’re afraid. You’re afraid I’m gonna leave like your father did.” 

She met his eyes bravely, cursing the rebel tear that escaped her left eye. “I was.” She knew she wasn’t anymore, but she struggled to find the words to explain why. “I was so afraid Phillip. I tried so hard to fight it, but it was a losing battle. That night at Jenny Lind’s concert, I gave in, because maybe, maybe, my mama was wrong.” 

It was Phillip’s turn to look away, shame filling his eyes and causing his grip in her hands to falter. She only tightened her own grip and caused his eyes to snap back to her. “I expected that to be it. You’d move on and I’d move on, hopefully learning to listen to my mother’s words. But you came back, you tried to take me to the theatre. Your parents only reminded me again of what my mama said. It was too much and I could only think of my own father, who had so easily fled my mother because of societal expectations. Maybe we could be happy if we were always alone, but I was certain that once the world saw us, you’d turn tail. That’s why I decided to leave you before you left me.” 

She traces the lines of their intertwined fingers with her eyes, lingering a moment on the contrast between her cocoa-colored skin and his white tones. Looking past that, she noticed he was nail chewer and smiled a little, endeared by the thought of an anxious Phillip chewing his nails before a show. 

“But after you ran into that fire for me, I knew that my mama was wrong. At least, for me she was. Our love is real, it’s real and it’s in the stars. It’s guaranteed to never fail.” Her voice fell into a whisper, but he seemed to have no problem hearing, as a warm smile burst across his face. 

“I thought I was gonna lose you right after I’d only just realized that I wanted this so badly it hurt. To have you, to get to keep you, Phillip, that’s a dream that I never knew I was allowed to imagine.” She chewed her lip again before she allowed t to tremble a bit, raising her eyes for the final time to let him see her tears. They weren’t tears of fear or sadness though. She was so happy, so relieved that she could sit here with him and share all that. She felt as if her bleeding heart, the one that had been wounded for so long, was finally being stitched back up as easily as the shawl she’d sewed with needle and thread. And the best part was that all it took was that man’s beautiful smile. 

He took her other hand and his smile reaching his watery eyes, he simply said, “Anne, I swear to you right here, right now, I promise you that you’ll never have to live through what your mother did. You will never have to wonder if our love is enough because, Anne, it’s overflowing for me. And perhaps it getting ahead of myself here, but I don’t care. Whatever children we have, they won’t have to wonder why. Not once, because I’m here for the rest of our life. I don’t ever want to imagine a life of mine without you in it.” 

His words only caused Anne’s tears to track faster and she smiled wobbly at him. “I love you, Phillip Carlyle.” She whispered, leaning close enough to him that their foreheads were touching, their noses brushing. “I love you more than the stars.” 

Phillip pulled her close, so much that she was almost in his lap. His eyes were squinting with the force of his smile and his teeth were shown off. With the utmost care, he tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and kept his hand there, cradling her head. When their lips were only just touching, he whispered to her, “You don’t have to be afraid, I love you now and forever.” 

If their first kiss was eager and long awaited, this kiss was slow and filled with a tenderness that almost made Anne burst into tears. Phillip caressed her cheeks, wiping away tears with his thumbs as he pressed his chapped lips to hers. She held her hands at the top of his spine, fiddling with the hair at the nape of his neck. 

After the initial kiss ended, he pressed several more light kisses to her lips before grazing some over her cheeks, nose and eyelids. 

Anne had never felt more loved in that moment. He pulled her down to him and she curled up on her side, pressing firmly against him. She could sense he was exhausted, after fighting to breathe and staying awake to listen to her story. They laid there in bed together, the only sounds in the hospital being the distant sound of coughing and a grandfather clock ticking somewhere. She watched his eyes until they sleepily fluttered shut. His breathing evened out and she knew he would sleep well tonight. As would she. 

As she drifted off, wrapped in Phillip’s arms, she imagined the life that stretched out ahead of her. She was glad her mama had been wrong all those years. She wished nothing more than for her mama to have met Phillip, to have seen what real love was, that it was true. 

There was one thing Anne knew for certain, one thing her mama had gotten right. She had kept her eyes on the stars and they had guaranteed her love, maybe after a little rearranging.

She didn’t need to be afraid anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to leave suggestions of anything you might like to see from me. I love ideas.
> 
> You guys are awesome, thank you for the amazing reviews on my other stories and for being so kind <3


End file.
